Study Questions:

What are patient-centered outcomes following stroke?

Methods:

An international expert panel representing patients, advocates, and clinical specialties in stroke outcomes decided on the global standards. The Standard Set was developed for adults presenting to a hospital with ischemic stroke (IS) or intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). A modified Delphi process was used.

Results:

Outcome categories recommended for assessment were survival and disease control, acute complications, and patient-reported outcomes. Effectiveness of smoking cessation was also selected. For survival, all-cause mortality was preferred over cardiovascular mortality because of poor reliability in the classification of cause of death. The following patient-reported outcomes were proposed for assessment at 90 days: pain, mood, feeding, self care, mobility, communication, cognitive functioning, social participation, ability to return to usual activities, and health-related quality of life.

Conclusions:

A Standard Set of stroke outcome measures allows for assessment of stroke care.

Perspective:

The authors provide a valuable set of outcome measures to allow for assessment of health care value in stroke management. As the authors acknowledge, ‘The utility of the Standard Set in practice is undetermined, and it is derived from expert consensus rather than high levels of evidence.’